


With Their Hearts Full of Love

by 148km



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 18:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/148km/pseuds/148km
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character exercise for <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/36671">Glitterbombs</a> featuring Marius, Eponine, and Cosette.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Their Hearts Full of Love

**Author's Note:**

> This hasn't been beta read and is more of a collection of loosely connected headcanons than an actual story. Not even really a vignette. I started this while I was stuck on [Lucky For You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/760662) just to try fleshing out some backstory for other characters.
> 
> Background Valjean/Javert because wow cutest family.

The first time Marius comes to an ABC meeting, it's because he's locked himself out of the apartment (again) and his phone is about to die.  Courfeyrac carries a spare key on him for situations like this about 50% of the time, but this is not one of those times, so Marius has to wait for the meeting to be over before he can go home.  There are free chips and Capri Sun, so he really can't complain.

It quickly becomes evident to him that he's the only straight person in the room.  He knows some of Courfeyrac's friends—he's met Enjolras once or twice, and Combeferre a few more times than that—but he hadn't realized that literally everyone Courfeyrac knows is gay.  (He'd had his doubts about the surly dude in the corner whose name he can't remember, but once he sees how he looks at Enjolras—no, Marius is definitely the only straight guy there.)

The worst thing about a Capri Sun is that it takes like thirty seconds to drink, and getting the last dregs of juice out of the pouch is loud and obnoxious and everyone turns to look at him.

This is how he meets Eponine.

Eponine likes him immediately.  She spends a couple of weeks pining over him (some miscommunication with Courfeyrac—which may or may not have included the phrase "afraid of girls"—leads her to believe that Marius is gay for a while) and thinking of excuses to hang out at Courfeyrac's place, but in the end, she manages to corner him and ask him out for coffee.

He doesn't realize she wants to date him until she says so explicitly.  He turns very red, possibly also because he'd been fishing in his pockets for his wallet for two minutes and now Eponine will have to foot the bill.  She grins wolfishly and tells him he can get the next one.

He attends meetings regularly from that point on.

```

They've been going out for three months when Cosette moves back to LA.

Eponine had known her in junior high—had been terrible to her, in fact.  Naturally, they're friends on Facebook.  Her profile picture is a terrible backlit photo of the Eiffel Tower, a silhouetted figure (presumably hers) in front of it.  It makes Eponine feel a little bit sick—partly because she thinks travel photos are showing off and partly because she's never been further from home than Las Vegas.

Eponine hardly uses her Facebook outside of promoting and organizing ABC events, which is how Cosette hears about the weekly meetings in the first place.  Cosette sends her a message with a cursory greeting, asking how life's been (shitty, thanks for asking), telling her that she recently moved back into the city and might sit in on a meeting one of these days to see what it's like and she hopes to see her there.

Eponine doesn't reply.

Two weeks later, Cosette walks into a meeting three minutes late and Eponine and Marius both have the exact same thought: _Oh no, she's hot_.

```

If you were to ask them how they came to their Arrangement, they honestly could not tell you.  They've tried.  (Marius is, however, the one who finds the Wikipedia page for polyamory.)  All Marius and Eponine know is that they love her immediately, and they love each other, and Cosette…

Cosette had known from an early age that she was pretty, but because of her father's work she was constantly moving and never got close to anyone.  So Eponine, at least, is familiar to her.  All the teasing she did when she was twelve is something Cosette barely remembers, and if she does remember it, she remembers it through a haze of nostalgia.

It is Eponine that she kisses first.

Marius, on the other hand, is completely new to her.  His shyness is endearing, and he and Eponine balance each other out perfectly.  Cosette is drawn to them as much as they are to her.

```

Eponine doesn't speak to her parents, and Marius' parents died years ago—they've never had to awkwardly meet each other's family before.  Dinner with Cosette's parents is unnerving for Eponine (whose parents have been arrested by Cosette's father on more than one occasion) and downright terrifying for Marius.

One of Cosette's dads is a cop.  The other one is a retired businessman, but he's just as intimidating as the cop.  Maybe more so, because he's weirdly buff for an old pencil pusher and he looks like maybe he could bend Marius over his knee and break him in half.

They seem to like Eponine—the cop, especially, who knows her parents and approves of her decision to cut them out of her life.  Eponine is polite for Cosette's sake, but finds it hard to relax around him, even when he isn't in uniform.

They are extra standoffish to Marius, as if to make up for how receptive they are to Eponine.  Marius thinks this is incredibly unfair; Cosette thinks it's hilarious.  She has to assure him for days afterward that her parents don't hate him: Dad, she says, is rough around the edges from a lifetime of service to the LAPD, but he's really just a teddy bear.  (Marius thinks but doesn't say that he seems like the regular kind of bear—the one that will maul you to death if you get between it and its cub.) Papa, on the other hand, is just slow to open up to people.  If their story is to be believed, they had something like a twenty-year courtship—so really, Marius shouldn't worry if he doesn't warm up to him right away.

```

Cosette and Eponine find an apartment together.  Marius, out of some misplaced sense of propriety (and perhaps fear of Cosette's parents), insists that he couldn't possibly move in.  It wouldn't be proper, he says, and he's already signed the lease with Courfeyrac for the next year.

This does not, however, prevent him from spending the night there every week or so.  Courfeyrac loudly prohibits the girls from spending the night at his place (despite the fact that Marius pays half the rent, it is still very much Courfeyrac's Place)—possibly in an unsuccessful bid to get him to move out, but Cosette jokes that he probably wants Marius all to himself.  Courfeyrac does not confirm or deny this.

But Marius may as well live with them, for all the time he spends there.  They refuse to give him his own key because he will _definitely_ lose it, so he's never there without Eponine or Cosette, but he has his own toothbrush and some of his laundry invariably ends up living in their dresser drawers.

The Arrangement works—they don't know how or why, and more importantly, they don't care.  It simply works.  _They_ simply work.  Between the three of them, there's more than enough love to go around.


End file.
